A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas Paperback – 3 Nov. 2016

A book that asks obvious and less obvious questions rather than positing someone’s formula for a well-lived life feels refreshing and honest.Tools to continue exploring and growing, but in your own way…the questions that might help you write your own manual for life.

Fascinating discussion, I know that I'm going to read this again later to try and make the lessons sink in more deeply. I enjoyed reading this slowly, with lots of pauses to try and apply the questions generated to my own experiences and problems.

Well received, thank you

Very provocative. It moves you out of that 'comforting' zone of comfort; away from a fact filled existence where nothing changes to a zone of discomforting inquisition where you become accustomed to questioning everything, including the perceived 'norms'. One of the unintended consequences perhaps is it will induce changes in the way I engage with my children in conversations.

Good: The book has moments that it's fantastic, providing good advice about enquiring in every aspect of our lives. I didn't even know there is a Right Question Institute (RQI). I checked their website, and I've got engaged in their content. There are some good examples that the author uses to explain some inquiring frameworks that work really well.To improve: After reading this book, I felt that the author stretched way too much the ideas. There were moments that I was thinking, "Why Is he repeating the same repeatedly? I've got your point!". So many long examples to explain a point that could be summarised for a better reader engagement. This is an over 200 pages book that that could easily be a 70-to-100-page book.

Sometimes you buy a book just to consolidate the knowledge you think you know. Then you read it to find it turns your perspective on something inside out. AMBQ does just this.In business all the focus is on knowing the right answers - but it's the questions that are important.AMBQ will help organisations to put the philosophising back into what they do. To understand more about how their future could be as a business through the questions they start to ask today.The only question you need to ask is why you didn't buy and read this book earlier!

This book if full of golden nuggets not in the form of time sensitive and often incomplete answers but in the form of timeless questions that I believe one should cultivate incessantly. Thank you for sharing and opening these windows into our naturally curious and innovative minds!

'A More Beautiful Question' can be summarised into 14 mental models:1. ALLOYING+To be creative you don't have to have a unique idea. You can simply combine two or more ideas that already exist. Take features from 2 objects to create something original, surprising or interesting. Think wider than just: "What if we combine A + B". Instead think about combining A + Z or A +272. AUTHORITY+There is an inverse relationship between = being an expert and being a good questioner.3. ECOSYSTEMS+"By employing the right kind of questions: open, curious, slightly provocative at times, but never judgmental, one could have a meaningful dialogue with people who are very different from you, culturally, politically and temperamentally.4. CATALYST+An excellent conversation starter is: How would you like things to be different in your life?5. COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE+A valuable question to ask yourself is: What does the world need most and that I am uniquely able to provide?6. CURIOSITY INSTINCT+Shift your perspective so that you are looking at the world as a curious child.+Question those that you disagree with in an open, curious way. Ask yourself: Why might they see the issue this way? Why do I see it differently? What assumptions are we each operating under?+'What if' questions: inspire creativity & spark the imagination.7. FIRST PRINCIPLE THINKING+'Why' questions are: Probing, penetrative, and cut through assumptions.+Open questions encourage creative thinking, for example: What If?/Why?/How?+Questionstorming encourages thinking of questions instead of ideas. During a questionstorming session, the group is asked to think of 50 questions about a specific problem. "How might we....." is the best way to structure questionstorming questions.+"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now than then to hang a question mark on the things you take for granted. - Bertrand Russell8. IKEA EFFECT+Instead of asking someone a question, let them create their own question. The result is that the question becomes their question and they will take ownership of it.+Peter Drucker said that his greatest strength was "to be ignorant and ask a few questions". People often expected him to come up with great solutions, but he told clients: "The answers need to be yours."9. INVERSION+Force your brain from its natural way of thinking by purposely thinking wrong. Think of ideas that don't make any sense and mix things that don't go together. "When you force yourself to confront contrary thoughts, you jiggle the synapses in the brain".+One of the most important questions you should ask is: What should we stop doing?10. NARRATIVE INSTINCT+Open-ended questions are a springboard for opinions and stories.11. RESISTANCE+You are more likely to be challenged or ignored when you approach people with answers. When you come with a question, people can not resist advising or helping you.12. TENDENCY TO MINIMISE ENERGY OUTPUT+Our brain finds ways to reduce our mental workload and one way it does that is to accept without questioning.13. THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY+You improve your questioning by going out into the real world and listening and observing.+Self-help books try to provide answers to meaning and happiness but these answers are one-size-fits-all. To find our meaning we must learn to ask the right questions to find our answers.14. THE RED QUEEN EFFECT+Instead of having a mission statement, companies (and people) should think about having a 'mission question'. "It tells the outside world, "This is what we're striving for - we know we're not there yet, but we're on the journey." It acknowledges room for possibility, change and adaptability. A company that is arrogant and claims to have figured things out doesn't sound as impressive as one that is striving to answer an ambitious question.

A good book to reflect about the goals we define in our lives and careers, and the way we can go by following the questions we create.I recommend it for any people who want to regckon on decision-making or even only understand how to generate better questions. As a professor it was inspiring for me. Business Professors should read it. Say the same to business leaders.

Takeaways from reading the book:Why are questions useful?- Page 3: Questions enable us to organize our thinking around what we do not know.- Page 5: Questions strengthen innovation.- Page 6: Questions invite us to think about doing something differently.- Page 6: Questions challenge authority.- Page 6: Questions disrupt established structures, processes and systems.- Page 7: Questions help us adapt.- Page 22: As the world becomes more complex and dynamic, the value of questions increases, and the value of answers decreases.- Page 38: Between ages 2 and 5, a child asks about 40,000 questions. During those years, questions change from asking about facts to asking for explanations. Children ask why because they want to understand things.- Page 74: Asking naive questions forces people to explain things simply. That can help bring clarity to a complex issue.- Page 175: A question encourages a person to reveal something about themselves.- Page 175: When you ask a question you show you care about the other person.- Page 176: Asking questions shows that we are curious.- Page 197: Great questions spark curiosity and imagination.What is a useful process to get better at asking questions?- Page 62: Find and focus on a topic.- Page 178: As you are considering questions to ask, curiosity should be the main ingredient.- Page 62: Write down questions.- Page 62: Improve questions.- Page 62: Prioritize questions.- Page 62: Act on prioritized questions.- Page 114: Put the idea that emerges on paper, for example as a text, picture or drawing.- Page 114: Create a prototype. That could be a short YouTube video, a blog or a 3D model of a product.- Page 62: Reflect on what you have learned.What questions can help focus on a challenge?- Page 51: What is interesting to you?- Page 90: A hospital hired IDEO to answer the question "What is your patient experience like?" Later, IDEO showed hospital leaders a dull video of a hospital ceiling. According to IDEO's Paul Bennett, the point was this: When you lie in a bed all day, all you do is look at the ceiling, and that is not a good experience. The result: The ceilings in each room were decorated.- Page 134: Why do people want you to lead?- Page 134: Why do you want to lead?- Page 172: How would you like things to be different in your life?- Page 178: What are you excited about these days?- Page 80: Great questioners keep looking, for example at a situation, at a problem, and/or at ways people behave. They study small details and look for what is missing.What questions can help us understand reasons for something- Page 86: For decades people working for Toyota used the "5 Whys" method to understand reasons of problems.- Page 174: If we don't agree on an answer yet, can we agree on a question?- Page 190: When you disagree with someone about something, try asking the person "Why do you think we disagree?"- Page 200: When you go through your day, try asking why you do what you do. Think about how you could do things differently in order to improve your life.What questions can help people set a goal?- Page 146: What is the ideal outcome?- Page 146: How do we get closer to the ideal outcome?- Page 146: How might we build on what we are doing well?- Page 178: What problem do you wish you could solve?What questions help us understand strengths?Page 146: What are you doing well?What questions can help us connect information, ideas and people?- Page 9: How might you tackle a long-standing problem that has affected your family?- Page 24: How does this information connect with other information?- Page 97: Coming up with original ideas often involves combining ideas. Einstein used the term "combinatorial thinking." An example: Airbnb is a combination of an online travel agency, social media and a bed-and-breakfast.- Page 190: When you disagree with someone about something, try asking "What do we agree about?"What questions can strengthen creative thinking?- Page 17: Why, what if and how questions encourage creative thinking more than yes/no questions.- Page 18: "What if questions" free up imagination because they allow you to see things as other a s they currently are. Example: What if a shop started selling socks that did not match?- Page 19: Founder of Netflix Reed Hastings asked the question "What if a video rental business were run like a health club?"- Page 35: Prosthetics inventor Van Phillips asked "Why does it have to cost so much?" and "How can I make it accessible to more people?"- Page 52: Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page continuously ask, "Why should it be like that?"- Page 53: What about transferring ownership for education to students? In this regard, what if students ask questions and teach?- Page 83: Founders of AirBnb asked "Why do we buy things that we do not need to own? What if access trumped ownership?"- Page 87: Before we try this thing worldwide, how might we make it work in our own backyard.- Page 127: The question" How might we?" has proved to be effective for solving problems.- Page 142: Andy Grove and Gordon Moore asked the question: If we were kicked out of the company, what would the new CEO do?- Page 143: Peter Drucker suggested that a leader regularly asked the question, "What should we stop doing?"What questions can strengthen the testing of ideas?- Page 34: How do I actually get this done?- Page 34: How do I begin to test the idea to see what works and what does not work?- Pages 19 and 67: Edwin Land's daughter Jennifer asked her father why they could not see the picture they had just taken without having to wait. That inspired Edwin Land to write a plan for an instant camera. This was the start of Polaroid. The creative process that led to the innovation was divided into the 3 parts: Why? What if? How?What questions can a person ask to offer help?Page 148: Doug Conant did walking rounds at Campbell Soup, during which he asked people questions. His closing question was "How can I help?"What are signs that you are an innovative questioner?- Page 11: You do not accept the existing reality.- Page 12: You do not see yourself as an expert.- Page 13: You want to solve problems.- Page 14: You are aware of what you do not know.- Page 14: You feel comfortable that you lack knowledge about something.- Page 29: You know that questioning + action = innovation.- Page 74: You have to be adventurous and humble to enter the "know nothing" zone of a constant questioner.Other questions:- Page 149: What if every meeting began with a question?- Page 149: What if a company regularly held question days?- Page 160: Would you rather be right, or would you rather learn and try to understand?- Page 178: What made you laugh today?- Page 179: What brought you to the place you live?- Page 179: What is the most enjoyable thing about living where you live?- Page 180: When you feel tempted to talk, ask yourself why.Other research from the book:- Page 45: Many years ago, education systems focused on compliance and memorizing information. They did this because the goal was to create good factory workers. In such systems questions were not wanted.- Page 65: John Seely Brown believes that young people may develop better new economy skills outside the classroom than in the classroom. They are learning to create, experiment, build, question and learn.- Page 145: In Warren Buffett's schedule there are days marked "haircut day." On those days Mr. Buffett gets his hair cut and spends the rest of the day thinking.- Page 179: Being a good questioner depends on being a good listener.- Page 181: To listen well, repeat what the person says.

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The quality of your life is determined by the quality of question you ask. On hearing this quote and intrigued, searching for a book on understanding the art of questioning and bought this book.This book did a good job of emphasising the importance of questioning by providing examples of how interesting questions resulted in starting of big companies.The framework of questioning including not not on asking questions but how to get that into action and have questioning follow during the entire process is beneficial. Questioning in business and life covers various questions that can be asked to realize the way things we do repetitively on reflux without understanding why, step back, ask questions, refine it, obtain clarity and optimize or change actions.Overall a great book on starting the journey of questioning and thinking.

Great book if you are on a journey to find ideas and problems to solve and need some inspiration to start